Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix

"I'm a dancin' fool now!"

For the last few months I've been making a weekly trip to my local arcade since they have some of the great classics that I love to play. One day while playing Killer Instinct, I couldn't help to be distracted by some young teenagers behind me bouncing around on this new game just put into the arcade. As I got done with KI, I was amused to see these kids dancing around to the beat of some really cool club music. I was nothing but amazed to see these kids moving as fast as they were, getting these perfect combos of dance steps, and sweating like crazy. Not to mention they were dancing against each other competing for the highest score. I thought this was the coolest things I had ever seen at an arcade. I wanted to try it so bad, but I knew I would embarrass myself, a grown man dancing away, ha ha! As time went by I thought that it would be fun to try, but I could not bring myself to do it since the arcade was full of people, not to mention the DDR game was always surrounded and you had to get in line to play.

So the other day I was walking through Wal-Mart, just browsing through the games and I see DDR: Ultramix game and dance pad bundle. I thought to myself, ''you know I've always wanted to try this.'' So I bought the game, took it home and hooked up the pad and popped in the disc. I set my option to light and started in the training room, since I have never played anything like this. Browsed through the song list and came to ''Castles In The Sky'' I liked the song, had a great beat and good sound to it. So I started and I'm thinking ''this can't be to hard, all you have to do is hit the arrows at the right time.'' Well needless to say I didn't do so well, and I got really discouraged. So I tried again, and did a little better. Then my lovely wife comes in and says, ''let me try!'' Now this is one woman that hates video games and hates it even more when I play them. But she got to moving around on the pad to the music and was laughing and smiling, I could tell she was having fun playing it. After I seen how much fun she was having I went out and bought another dance pad the next day, and now we dance together. Of course neither of us are very good at the game, but we have gotten a lot better in just 2 days of playing. Not to mention, it's a wonderful workout for the both of us. I'm loving every minute we play DDRU together, and I love playing it by myself too.

Now, when we have friends come over, they all want to play the game.

I have nothing to compare this game to since this is the only DDR game I've ever played. But if you have $55-$60 extra to spend, go ahead and pick this game up and give it a try. I never thought I would enjoy playing a game with my feet, but it is loads of fun. I'm hooked now, and since my after market pad I bought is also compatible with my PS2, I will probably pick up DDRMAX2 for it as well.

FINAL THOUGHT:
Great fun for the entire family.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/28/04